Bought my Tesla five years ago. Put solar panels on my roof. I’ll never go back to gas. It’s neat to wake up every morning with a full tank of electric fuel. And never going to a gas station again is liberating.

One thing I always recommend, is to RENT the EV that you're interested in, just to make sure it will work for you. I rented one for 1 full week. It's like a "no obligations extended test drive". You can learn much more about any car, EV or otherwise, if you live with it for a week or more, than you ever can by just driving one around the block at a dealership. It's well worth the $500-$1,000 to rent for a while, before making a $50,000 dollar mistake! My next car will indeed be an EV! I had a very good experience, with the 2023 Chevrolet Bolt EV that I rented from a local car rental company. I'm more than ready to trade in petrochemical energy for electrochemical energy, trade in fuel injection for pulse width modulation, and trade in combustion for electromagnetism.

@ljpr360

3 ай бұрын

This is great advice. I would have a much more comfortable Toyota with more range had I done this.

@vincentrobinette1507

3 ай бұрын

That's the whole idea...If you don't like one, try renting something different. The money you spend renting several cars is still far less, than the value lost, if you try to trade one in, if you don't like it.@@ljpr360

On the subject of home chargers get one that has both CCS and NACS! The Tesla universal is perfect. It's very expensive to switch out chargers. And starting next year cars will start switching to NACS so even if you don't have a Tesla your next non-Tesla car will likely have the Tesla connector, so be prepared. It's also nice to have both CCS and NACS in case you rent another EV or have visitors that need to charge.

@vincentrobinette1507

3 ай бұрын

For level 2 charging, you should have very little trouble using an adapter. If you get a Tesla, just get an NACS to CCS adapter. No problems with heat, considering you're only looking at 30 amps, not 300. My solution, is to have a NEMA 15-50 appliance outlet installed, and just use the charge cable that comes with the car. Almost all of them have the right adapter cords for that standard household outlet. That will serve any EV whether it uses CHAdeMO, CCS, or NACS.

I just filed my taxes and I did get the $7500 credit, that really brought down the cost of my Model Y. The best thing about an EV is you can leave the climate control on so the car is comfortable when you get back in after parking it for a while while shopping and your pet will be fine in there. I have not seen the tire wear difference. My wife's Model 3 has 25,000 miles on it now and the tires are fine. Her old Malibu wore out tires faster. The savings on gas depends on how much you were driving and what gas car you had. If you don't drive much the savings won't add up.

The gasoline vs. electricity section was way more complicated than needed. 1 gallon of gas is about 33 kW, 33 kW will get you about 100 miles in a moderately efficient EV. Where I live 33 kW costs about $4. So a rough estimate would be to divide what you spend on gasoline by 4 if going from a ICE SUV to and EV SUV.

@brushlessmotoring

3 ай бұрын

Agreed, another way to calculate it (for people used to buying gasoline) is to multiply the kWh price by 9.5 to get a "gallon equivalent" price to compare against, or 2.5 for litres - this is based on how far you can travel in comparable cars, rather than getting caught up in kWh of chemical energy in a gallon of gasoline, but then having to factor in the efficiency of the combustion engine. Instead, focus on miles per gallon vs. miles per kWh and how much to travel 100 miles in each - like you say, up to 4 times cheaper (2.3 times based on the averages prices in this video)

I got 9700 dollars off on my Ioniq 6. I'm good at math.

Another great video. I am not as concerned about the actual range. They all have greater highway range than my bladder. I recommend that people know the charging curve of an EV when shopping. Don't pay attention to the max charge rate or miles added in ten minutes. Look at the 10& to 80% charging time. Also, tire wear is a real thing, but that's true on Dodge Hellcats driven by 18 year olds as well. My EV has 37,000 miles on its tires and I have 6/32" tread all around. Just because they are "holy crap" fast and fun to throw around doesn't mean they are at fault for the tire wear.

Plenty of very good advice, thanks.

I got screwed in the tax credit, my car was available for the credit 2 weeks before I got it, but when I bought it, the tax credit was taken away.

@AndrewNicholsSeattle

3 ай бұрын

Similarly, when I got my tesla M3 in 2019 I was ineligible for the credits I was expected to get because at the time the credits were based on how many vehicles were sold by the manufacturer

Great tips. Thanks

Such critical information, straight to the point. I love this channel. Very informative. Keep it up, much respect.

Gotta say that your math section of the video probably confused more people than it helped. Should have simply used the average miles traveled in a year (12k miles) and broken down how much it would have cost per year to drive a CR-V versus an Ioniq 5. Forget trying to convert electricity rates to its equivalent gasoline per gallon price. You'll just confuse people. Keep it simple - to drive 12k miles with a CR-V costs $X versus $Y for the Hyundai.

@vincentrobinette1507

3 ай бұрын

He did use a little math, but the bottom line, is the overall cost per mile. He was calculating electricity only compared to gasoline only. He touched on, but did not factor in, the cost of routine engine maintenance. Note that EV's don't have engines and transmissions, but they DO have differentials, brakes, and even coolant! While brake pads and rotors last a long time, owing to regenerative braking, it's still necessary to flush the brake fluid every so often, just like any other car. You will literally flush the brake fluid more often than replacing pads, or brake shoes. Ford recommends a coolant flush every 150,000 miles. (240,000 kilometers) You do need to change the gear oil in the differential as often as is necessary in a combustion car. The ONLY things missing, are the engine and transmission. Tires are entirely dependent on driving habits. If you accelerate, corner, and brake gently, you can easily get the same mileage out of a set of tires as you would, if the same tires were on another car. Even though EV's are heavy, the weight is down low, minimizing weight transfer from the inside wheels to the outside wheels, which actually prolongs the life of tires. While there is more static weight on EV tires, the dynamic loading is only about the same.

UPDATE 5/14/24: I did get my first EV -- a KIA Niro EV in Wave trim. *end of update* IF I go EV, it's going to be a leased Hyundai Kona EV. I have solar roof panels so my cost for kWh is ZERO. As I'm planning on leasing, I believe I'm still eligible for the full $7500 tax credit off MSRP, plus my State of NJ has a State Tax Credit, and my local utility company has a rebate offer on installing the Level 2 charger and kWh rebate as well. If I do the math, the EV Kona will cost me LESS than the ICE version. Still have to compare auto insurance rates, but it would not be a big uptick as I drive very few miles/month. Stay tuned....

Friends make sure you are comfortable in your new EV & test rapid charging while the battery is cold. I'm stuck in a Mazda MX-30 EV with the worst seats in automotive history & a whopping 3kW rapid charging speed under any temperature colder than 15C (which isn't cold) I wish I had waited for a Toyota BZ4X (which people still complain about in the cold but is much better than this tiny uncomfortable box that can't travel far outside my hometown half the year!) I gave up a comfortable Mazda 6 with 1000kms of highway driving per tank for this?

@brushlessmotoring

3 ай бұрын

The MX30 and Bz4x (Solterra, 450e) are not well regarded by EV'ers, charge speed is poor, efficiency is low, and the value per mile of range is uncompetitive, plenty of similarly priced alternatives? Any chance you can undo the MX30 purchase and pick a different model, the Ionic 5/6, GV60, EV6 if you can't stand the tweeter .... ? The Mustang is a better buy, the Bolt is good value and compact ... really anything but the latecomers (Honda, Toyota, Mazda)

@mowcowbell

2 ай бұрын

lol, you actually bought a MX-30? Didn't you watch a single KZread review of that POS?

Forget tax rebates on EV purchase... how about make DCFC cheaper?

@brushlessmotoring

3 ай бұрын

Tesla just dropped the Canadian prices a bit, and some BC prices are as low as 14 cents per kWh (North Delta) for DC Supercharging (most are 50 cents, down from 70)

As someone who lives in an apartment complex with no garages or outside outlets (in Ohio no less), the closest I could get to an EV is a hybrid vehicle. This has the downsides of both electric and ICE in one nice package. So my family is going to stick with a conventional gasoline powered vehicle.

@nikidelvalle

3 ай бұрын

Uh, it also has many of the upsides of both as well, sometimes better. Hybrids are more gas efficient, often get incredible range, and have lower maintenance costs than equivalent gasoline vehicles (regenerative brakes help keep your friction brakes healthy for a long time). Better, since neither the engine or the battery are consistently taxed, both components can last an incredibly long time and are cheaper to replace than equivalent parts in a gasoline or electric video.

@mowcowbell

2 ай бұрын

Buy a house first, EV next.

@nikidelvalle

2 ай бұрын

@@mowcowbell This is America, in most places you need a car in order to earn enough money to get a house.

@davidroddini1512

2 ай бұрын

@@mowcowbell If I buy the house first, I’ll not have the money for the EV 🤷‍♂️

@mowcowbell

2 ай бұрын

@@nikidelvalle Yeah, you buy a cheap used car, work hard, buy a house. Then you can buy an EV.

Your point 6 is misleading as you are not factoring in the 240 volt 90% charging efficiency. This means it takes 33.7 kWh to get 33.7 kWh into the battery.

@brushlessmotoring

3 ай бұрын

Point 6 is a mess, talking about the chemical energy in a gallon of gasoline ignores the low combustion efficiency, you don't get 33kWh to the wheels, you get closer to 9.5kWh delivered in actual motion in a combustion car, the rest is wasted as heat in the cylinders, carried away to the radiator. Better to focus on distance achieved, compare fuel per 100 miles or km for instance makes the comparison clearer.

We own hybrid car until time to replace battery and findout the car value worth noting after Subtract battery price. We never buy hybrid or battery car again. Hybrid car cost more to buy, cost more to fix and depreciation real bad.

@ALMX5DP

3 ай бұрын

What year make and model did you own?

@brushlessmotoring

3 ай бұрын

Yup, hybrids were a mess, go all gasoline or all battery - you will cycle a hybrid battery 10 times faster than a full EV because the full EV's battery is much bigger and can be mostly kept between 20% and 80%, some are lasting over 500,000 miles.

@aliendroneservices6621

2 ай бұрын

​@@ALMX5DPObviously not any Toyota.

You should re-do the math section, your cents per mile, buried at the end, was far more useful to compare the two, EVs are 2.3 times cheaper charged at work or home - that should have been up front and clear. The 33.7 kWh per gallon ignores efficiency losses and so is irrelevant, your EV pricing at $5.46 being twice as expensive as gas at $3.52 is wrong because it completely misses the point that a combustion engine will throw away 80% of your gasoline energy as heat not motion, your second comparison gets closer, but doesn't compare like for like, so it's confusing, you get the cents per mile right (EVs are 2.3 times cheaper), but then gloss over it, leaving the viewer with the impression EV's are more expensive than gasoline cars, when in fact they are at least half the price, and some states are only a few cents per kWh making the "EV gallon" just 50 cents. Use a 9.5 times multiplier to compare kWh pricing to gasoline, factor the DISTANCE difference between 1 US gallon vs. 1 kWh in a like for like sedan, at 16.21 cents per kWh, times 9.5 and you get an "EV gas price" of $1.53 not your $5.46 - you are out by a factor of 3.5 - similar to the efficiency difference between a combustion engine and an electric motor - focus on the outcome (distance) not the theoretical energy stored - electric drivetrains are over 90% efficient. Redo that entire section - it will be shorter too. As others have said, step 1 is a rental, ideally for a week of local and road trip driving, and, even if you never intend to buy a Tesla, you should rent a vehicle that can use their charging network - that will give you a view of what EV ownership should be like, even if others are still catching up (or falling even further behind).

Buy house first.

Cost per mile is not a good way to the real cost. The real cost of ownership with is considered as better way to compare between gas and EV. Cost of fuel should include the cost of replacing the ev battery

More efficient is a stretch and is misleading.

Electric vehicles suck. They take way too long to charge, the charging infrastructure is simply not ready for prime time, they use a variety of different, incompatible, proprietary charging standards, they use slave labor to mine the raw materials to make the batteries, they charge primarily from dirty fossil fuels like coal burning, and the battery life goes to shit in cold weather. I'll take my gas-guzzling vehicle that fills up from empty to full in under five minutes, has access to gas stations at nearly every major intersection, has incredible range regardless of the weather, and costs on average greater than $10,000 less than a similarly equipped electric vehicle. Now the Biden administration is reversing course on the 2030 deadline because everyone knows it's a pipe dream. California will reverse course once Newsom is out of office too. There are rolling blackouts every summer and the government tells the citizenry not to charge their electric vehicles to lessen the stress on the electrical grid. Electric vehicles are luxury items for rich people.

@nikidelvalle

3 ай бұрын

Just because EVs have a higher initial cost doesn't mean they are more expensive. EVs have far lower maintenance costs and you can travel further for less money, often for completely free if you use public charging infrastructure. Over time, the cost of ownership of an EV is so low that you will save that $10000 within a short few years. And that presumes that you even spent that $10000 to begin with. EVs depreciate so quickly that you can buy far newer, better equipped electric vehicles than gas equivalents for far CHEAPER. As an example, there is a full stack of 10 Chevy Bolts less than 100 miles away from me all priced at around 12k to 13k. These Bolts are as new as 2021, some of them are premiere trim, all of them have less than 50k miles on them (I've seen them at less than 15k miles at this price point), and many of them have luxury features like heated seats and steering wheels and safety features like rear cross traffic alert. The cheapest gasoline equivalents are economy cars with more miles on them and fewer features, and the cheapest similarly equipped vehicles are thousands of dollars more. So yeah, most of what you just said is brazenly wrong. Also the idea that California of all places will dial back on EVs when they have some of the most expensive gas prices in the entire country is ludicrous.

@harryfrye69

3 ай бұрын

I live in California. Trust me, they will absolutely dial back on electric vehicles when the electrical grid shuts down in the summer months due to overuse. There have already been times in the past, where in the same week a newspaper states electric vehicles are the future; another article in the same newspaper reminds citizens not to charge their electric vehicles. Chevy Bolts are stacking up because no one wants to drive them. Driving a Bolt is like riding a moped; it may be fun but you never want to get caught by your friends doing it. Also, I'd honestly never drive a Bolt, I'm not gay, and I don't want women to think I am. The More You Know!🏳‍🌈⭐ @@nikidelvalle

@matthewmortensen7401

3 ай бұрын

@@harryfrye69just so your aware California is well on the way to full EV market saturation. Last year EVs made up more than 25% of the new LDV sector and sales are still growing at 30% YOY. Your predictions are already obsolete just like your cars.